A Sentinel Named Fluffy
by The Invader Androgynous
Summary: A sentinel is reprogrammed by humans. Doubting that it can ever truly give up killing, the council orders the machine's loyalty be proved. Machine graveyards and learning to adjust to the Matrix, can something truly deny what it was created for?
1. The Ressurection

This started out as a complete comedy but my writing style is more set for writing dramas. So I guess it'll be a dramatic comedy. I'm not a big fan of the Matrix at all, but I really like the Animatrix, so if I'm screwing up any factual things (other than the facts I have to bend to make this story work) let me know. 

It started out as many things to. A small part of a bigger project, a grander scheme of life, something one has no personal attachment to. And then it becomes personal, and it doesn't just become mildly personal. It becomes consuming, looming, the only thing you can concentrate on. The only thing that matters.

Outside of the circle of those allowed to be close to her, she was called the Chimera, a name taken from mythology. It was the name of the ever-changing creature created from the parts of other creatures. "Andi", as she was so called by close friends, had been one of the ones consumed by her project. Whether that was lucky or not, well, no one seemed to know. 

With tweezers so small that she had to use a magnifying glass to see their sharp tips, she leaned over a large body draped in white sheets. She wore a surgical mask on her face, shredding remains of a lab coat over her body, and thick, cracking rubber gloves on her hand. But this was no human being she was performing surgery on.

For no human being has ever been made of a mass of metal, cold surfaces and hot wires flowing in and our of a mother board so tiny and fragile looking that it was impossible to believe her "patient," sprawled beneath a layer of dusty sheets, was a killing machine. A killing machine, and nothing more.

Still, she found herself growing attached to the monster. She'd been carefully teasing circuits and wires back in and out of it for close to a month, repairing damage that had been torn into the shell of a body by human projectiles. It was her project, her first project that she'd been allowed to work on by herself. Of course, there was no way in hell she'd admit that she felt that growing kinship. She'd rather have taken the blue than admit to that.

She'd left the false world because she wanted to feel special. To have a "secret" that the rest of the humans, the sleeping ones didn't share. She'd always felt that she should be elevated about the teeming masses. That she didn't belong with them. Sometimes, she even felt that they should just be left in the Matrix. They'd never appreciate their freedom even if they had it. Not like she did. They'd rather have their microwaves and Fox News than the truth.

Of course, those were just passing thoughts, and she never dared articulate them. It didn't fit with the "team spirit" and the "sense of community and faith in humanity" someone in her situation was supposed to have. Most of the time, she really did believe in the mission. Hell, if she didn't believe in the mission, she wouldn't be risking her life for it. It was her life, her world. Her new community was everything to her.

She sat back, brushing a drop of sweat from her face and tasting salt on her lips as she studied the silent robot waiting for her to be good and ready to return to bringing life to its dead circuits. Her friends, her fellow scientists, working on the same project had been slaughtered only a few days earlier. They'd left their guard down until, as the cameras rescued from what remained of their lab showed, sentinels had charged through the glass windows and proceeded to eliminate the last drop of human life at the outpost.

But a robot that had come to love human nature, to appreciate human life, had tried to come to their rescue. If only he hadn't been so late, maybe something could have been done…

Her current patient was not one of the ones that had raided the lab. She wouldn't have been able to objectively work on the creatures whose claws had taken her friend and mentor's life, even as she continued to work on resurrecting one of their "siblings."

The plus side was that the project worked. Robots shown a better world, a world where man was their companion and not their enemy or food source, would convert. They would even risk their own lives, go against their own kin, to protect man.

However, so far the experiment hadn't worked on sentinels. They were too violent, too single minded, to convert. They weren't built with high logic capabilities. They were expendable, brute enforcers. There were the LAPD of the robot world, essentially. Conventional logic said they couldn't be reasoned with.

Hence why she was spending her hours with aching fingers and a throbbing back, hunched over the metal corpse of a creature she couldn't have despised more if she tried. A small rewiring of the main control chips, and a disarming of the weapons were of course in order before they'd try to bring it back online. But with the new hardware came the possibility of adding new software.

She'd designed the software based off the standard algorithm for programming a dog. Just enough intelligence to be compassionate, loyal, and be willing to accept a human as its pack leader. Not enough intelligence to potentially realize that it was being essentially tricked into behaving the way they wanted it to. 

The perfect spy, or so they planned. Loyal to them, but otherwise completely indistinguishable from the enemy. It would speak the same language, look the same, give off the same identification signals. Sometimes it helped to have an enemy army essentially composed of identityless clones.

A drip of an oily substance slid down the side of the machine's dulled and dented carapace, making a sound barely loud enough to have been heard by the sharpest-eared of humans. In the silence of the room, however, it caused Andi to jump. "Whoa, girl," she said to herself in the empty darkness, smearing grease across her face when she wiped the sweat off her brow.

"You talking to yourself again?" a harsh male voice asked, causing her to jump even further. "Or perhaps you're talking to that _machine_."

Andi glared at Jayson, his dark brown skin shining unnaturally in the low light from overhead. "What, did you come here to show off that you'd waxed yourself again?" she asked, turning around. "And if you must know, I'm planning to run away with this sentinel and form a lovely family of tentacle-covered multiple-eyed humanoid offspring. I'm thinking a June wedding would be nice."

"You always had a thing for June weddings," he smirked, walking over and lifting a dusty tentacle in the air. "But you're in for a problem… I think this one's a girl."

"Put that down, you sick ass. Machines don't have gender."

Jayson grinned and wiggled that tentacle in her direction. "Come on, now, what's life if you can't have a little… gack!" Somehow, his waving the tentacle activated a reflex, as the tentacle was now firmly wrapped around his neck. He flailed his arms wildly. Andi grabbed the tentacle and pulled, freeing a gasping Jayson.

"I thought this thing was deactivated!" he screamed, kneeling on the cold metal floor.

"It is, but the reflex mechanisms still work as long as its power source is intact."

"Damn things are killers even when they're dead," he snapped, kicking the limp tentacle angrily. "This is a stupid idea," he huffed, storming out of the lab.

Andi sighed and put the tentacle back on the table. "Don't listen to him," she said out loud to the darkness. "He's just an asshole. He says it's because the machines still have his sisters… but I think he's just afraid. Afraid of dying, afraid that there's nothing after this but darkness. I mean, we all are, but if we thought about it all the time like he does we'd all be that unhappy."

She closed the open box on the carapace. "That should be about good. I'll run a diagnostic in the morning, and then let's see if we can get you working."

***

Andi was awakened in the middle of the nice, ice blue eyes wide, dirty hair that had no real color flying about her overtly pale face. She'd had a dream that she'd opened her eyes to find a set of brilliant red circular eyes looking down on her, blood dripping out of cracks set in the eyes. Sharp clawed tentacles lunged at her chest, and she could almost feel it piercing into her ribs.

Needless to say, she felt more than a bit of trepidation the next morning when she peeled back the sheet, revealing the deadly length of her patient. An elder scientist who had been assisting her put a hand on her shoulder. "You're shaking," he said, his voice failing to betray any emotion.

"I'm worried that it won't work. That it'll refuse to change. That it may even kill us."

"It'll be chained down until we know it's converted. Don't worry." He took a hand off her and began to walk away.

"No," Andi said suddenly, her voice sharp and foreign to herself. "You can't. If it wakes up and finds that we've put it in chains, how can it trust us?"

"But if we don't…"

"It's a chance I'm willing to take." She looked over at the two gathered young assistant scientists. "Even if no one else will." 

The head scientist, a man who was one of the few paler than Andi, sat down and rubbed his nearly bald head. "All right, connect it up."

"Her," Andi said sharply. "It's not an it. It's a her." She grinned over at a critical Jayson, leaning against the wall. "Jayson said so."

"Fine, if you two are going to continue acting like children, hook HER up. Let's begin this conversion."

As Andi slipped under, a shiver ran through her body. She could almost feel those claws piercing her chest in her dream all over again as a wave of black overwashed her to take her into the simulation.

But before any part of the simulation could begin, Andi found the lights coming on and her eyes opening to focus on the real world. "What's going on?" she asked. "Why did we abort?"

"There's a short circuit somewhere. The sentinel won't come online."

"I don't believe that," Andi said angrily, clawing across the floor and pulling open the body. "It must just be a loose wire some…" a shock ran through her body, throwing her off and backwards. A terrible whirring noise filled the room as tentacles whipped forward, shoving up and off the platform. 

One of the younger scientists screamed like a girl. Jayson wrapped his arms around an emergency weapon. Andi shuttled backwards on her rear end, trying to get out of reach as the large robot swung around, tons of red eyes bearing down on her.

This is it for me, Andi thought as it lunged forward, eyes set straight on her and massive body bearing down.

==

When her breath finally returned to her lungs, Andi looked down. The rest of the lab was locking on in shocked surprise as well. The sentinel had indeed lunged at her, but had wrapped its arms around her without crushing her. Butting the large head area against her body and causing pain in her ribs, it did the best job such a clunky thing could do of giving her an affectionate rub.

"Nice… nice girl," Andi choked. "Down girl."

The robot blinked at her and flopped down on the ground forcefully enough to shake jars and objects hanging off the walls. She reached out and cautiously patted it, causing it to emit a high-pitched whine. Andi jumped a bit, but the robot made no movement.

"It's the dog programming," Andi whispered. "She's… behaving like a dog." 

"Get away from it," Jayson ordered, lowering the pulse generator at the sitting sentinel. "It's unconverted."

Andi moved between the two, stretching out her arms. "What are you doing? She's not attacking us!"

"It's also not converted! Get away, it's dangerous! It could turn around and kill you at any second."

"No. I don't believe it will. If we want the robots to trust us, we have to trust them."

Jayson lowered his weapon. "When you die, it'll be no skin off my back," he hissed, showing his teeth in a feral grimace. Then with that, he turned around in a whirl of fabric and stormed out, still dragging the pulse generator with him.

The sentinel whined loudly. "What's wrong?" Andi asked, looking at it.

"It says it doesn't want to go to the blackness again," the head of a spindly robot with nothing more remaining than said head and torso said, his one remaining eye trying in vain to focus on her. He was a very old machine, left behind from the early days. He'd been found frozen in a block of glacial ice, and he had no memory of what had happened before that moment. 

Andi froze. "Ask… ask her if she remembers what happened to her. Before the darkness."

More high-pitched whining and mechanical whirring occurred between the two. "No. She doesn't. She just remembers the darkness… and your voice. When you screamed, she remembered your voice. You always spoke so kindly to her in the darkness."

"I screamed?" Andi asked, looking surprised.

"Yes, and it was a rather cute and feminine scream if I may say so myself," the doctor said, stepping down from the platform. "Not like anything I'd expect out of you.

"You're mean," Andi sniffed, then turned her attention back to the still attentive robot. "She was alive when we operated on her."

"Don't worry about that now," the doctor said, moving forward. "What matters is the conversion was successful."

"We don't know if it'll work again. This seems to have been a fluke case," another of the young scientists added, causing both Andi and the doctor to shoot dagger-like looks in his direction.

Finally, Andi walked forward and rubbed the top of the monster's head. "She needs a name. How about… Fluffy?"

"Fluffy? That's the most ridiculous name for a sentinel I've ever heard. How about Killer or Fang?"

"Come on guys, you'll give her a complex," Andi argued as the robot snuggled against her leg. "And this is kind of creeping me out. Stop that," she said, gently pushing the sentinel away. It sat down and looked up at her, a crushed appearance reflecting in bright eyes. 

"Oh, I'm sorry… I didn't mean to… I…" Andi sighed and brushed back her hair. "Okay, okay, you can be friendly if you want."

The sentinel brightened up… and immediately bowled Andi over and sat proudly on her chest. The doctor and his assistants snorted in amusement.

"Obedience school," Andi muttered. "What we definitely need here is some obedience training."

Jayson, hovering outside the door, listened to the laughter of the scientists filtering out of a crack. "We'll see what the people in charge have to say about keeping an untrained sentinel in Zion."

___


	2. Blind Panic

"Hey, Andi, let me help you. Where are you dragging that heavy box to?" Jayson asked, taking a set of steep but decorative metal stairs two at a time.

Andi set the brown box down with a clunk of metal banging against metal, facing him with a dead look and hair dangling over her eyes. "The council wants proof that Fluffy isn't dangerous."

Jayson smirked while he shook his head seemingly sympathetically. "What a shame."

Andi lifted the box. "So, these are my personal things. I'm going to the sugar outpost to finish her training." Andi looked sadly into the box. "The whole contents of my cell. If I were to vanish tomorrow, this would be the only proof that I ever existed in the real…"

"You're talking crazy, and not just about the box. You can't just pick up and leave for sake of one glitchy experiment."

"That _glitchy experiment,_" Andi snapped as she stomped awkwardly down the stairs, "is the reason the only true father I've ever known is dead. I'm not going to give up on the dreams he left me."

Fluffy, her dark red eyes half closed except for the one missing leftmost eye, casually rolled a yellow rubber ball around with two of her many arms. She barely paid any notice to Andi removing objects from the walls and wrapping them in cracked sheets of rotted fabric for transport. 

Fluffy's one broken tentacle lay off at an odd angle among the others. Andi hadn't been able to figure out how to fix the crimp in the black coil, so it remained an anomaly on her. Most of Fluffy's attention was on the ball, but every once in awhile she'd shoot Andi an accusing glance.

Andi set down her fingerprint smeared magnifying glass and rubbed her palm over Fluffy's dented, black metal head. "I know you want to play, but I have to pack. We'll play when we get to the post, I promise."

"So you're really going?" one of the younger lab assistants, a man prone to using most bestest instead of best, asked as he stuck his head through the doorway.

"I have to. The council won't listen to me." She closed the box again. "Fluffy, come." The sentinel sat there. Andi sighed. "Come, please?"

The machine finally hovered over, holding the ball between her two front arms. Andi looked down at it. "Oh, what the hell," she asked, taking the ball and throwing it into the next room.

Fluffy was off like a rocket, knocking over two tables with a flip of her wild tentacles in the process. Andi cringed. 

"Good luck with your Destruct-O-Matic," the assistant quipped.

"It slices, it dices, but does it make Jillian fries?" Andi sighed as she joked back. Fluffy returned a moment later, proudly carrying the ball in two hands and the squirming, screaming Jayson in the other hands. Andi know she shouldn't, but she did. "Look, she's already dragging home stuff she found in the trash!"

"I just came to see you off and try to talk you out of this craziness," Jayson snapped as he was unceremoniously deposited, along with the ball, on the floor. "Stupid piece of scrap metal."

"She's actually pretty smart, far as sentinels go. She wanted to know why," Andi said, jerking a thumb at the dangling robotic torso, "he can talk like us and she can't." Andi looked at Jayson, struggling to pick himself off the metal floor. "I think she's jealous."

"You're giving too much credit to her," Jayson sniffed, black lips drawn together. "She's… IT'S… a sentinel. The most complicated thing they understand is 'me fly, me kill, go me."

"That's not true! Watch! Fluffy, roll over."

Fluffy sat there for a moment, then rolled onto her back, crossed all her legs over her chest, and lay very still.

Andi pouted as the others laughed. "Hey, she got it half right…"

"Maybe if you tell her to play dead she'll roll over?" the head doctor suggested as he stepped into the room, cutting the laughter short. "Andi… I'll miss you. You were a ray of sunshine here."

"I'll be back, once I can prove the truth about her."

"Then I wish you luck. And… and Godspeed, Andi."

Andi smiled and licked her dry, cracked lips. What she wouldn't give for a tube of strawberry lipgloss, a treat to be had only in the illusionary world of the Matrix. "Thanks. I'll… I'll try." She lifted her box onto Fluffy's back. "Well… bye…"

"You're surely not thinking of taking that sentinel out into the middle of the city, are you? Convert or not, you'll cause a panic. Look at this from the view of the people here, from the view of those that run the ships. They spend their lives killing or being killed by sentinels. They're not going to ask questions before they start shooting."

Andi's arms dropped to her sides in a fleshy slapping noise of defeat. "Then how do you suggest I get her to the hangar?"

***

Andi huffed and crossed her arms. "This," she declared, "is stupid."

"You always were the opinionated one," the doctor smiled, patting Fluffy's head. She was beneath a thick white sheet labeled "parts." Fluffy made a robotic chirping noise in seeming agreement.

"Be quiet, you," Andi sighed. "Let's just hope nothing happens, okay?" Andi turned to the lab assistant. "Come down with me? Watch her while I find out what ship we're supposed to be on?"

"No problem."

"Why didn't you ask me?" Jayson huffed, staring at Andi.

Andi stared back. "Because you don't like sentinels."

No sooner had they reached the hanger and Andi was out of sight than the lab assistant looked cautiously around. He lifted up the sheet. "Hey… can you roll over for me? I wanna see you do it."

Fluffy, obediently, managed to roll right over… and off the platform, losing her disguise in the process. There was a long, empty period where Fluffy looked back and forth between a group of passing humans before they opened their mouths loudly and screamed "SENTINEL!"

Fluffy, caught off guard by the noise, shot straight up into the air. The people who had turned around at the sound of the scream now joined their voices with the screaming girl's voices before the mass stampede for the doors began.

Poor Fluffy, confused by the motion, panicked and searched frantically for Andi. Not seeing her, the machine flew straight up and hid in the lighting fixtures, her tentacles trembling from the shock of surprise.

"What's going on?" an armed soldier shouted, jumping over heads and landing amidst the panicking crowd.

"There's a sentinel in the lights!"

"Not for long there won't be," the solider said confidently, raising his gun upwards and searching the high ceilings for any signs of her. A long dangling tentacle caught his eye and he cocked his weapon, ready to fire.

"Stop!" Andi screamed, trying to push her way through the screaming. "She's a convert! You're only making things worse by scaring her! She'll calm down if you…"

The soldier, too caught up in the moment to listen, had begun firing at the ceilings, but had failed to hit any vital points on Fluffy, who had taken off at the sound of the first bullet. Instead of hitting their target, the bullets sent a cascade of broken glass showering down, falling all over the hangar and people in it, causing screams of "We're under attack" to rise up from what remained of the panicking crowd.

Andi grabbed Fluffy's forgotten yellow ball from underfoot. "Fluffy!" she cried, waving it around. "FLUFFY! Get it girl, go get it!" she screamed, hefting the ball into the back of their ship, left open for loading.

Overcoming her fear in order to please her master, Fluffy joyfully pursued the ball, followed by a panting and wild-eyed Andi. Andi slammed the button to close the back. As the door slid shut, Fluffy made a single inquisitive chirp when she returned the ball to Andi.

Moments later, the head of hangar security stomped in, a humming EMP in his hands. "What's going on here? You can imagine how much I like having my lunch interrupted by someone screaming 'There's a sentinel in the hanger! Oh my God, we're all going to die, and someone's taking pot shots at the lights!"

The young soldier hid his smoking gun behind his back, face flushed. "But there was a sentinel! I saw it" an older woman protested. "It had big, poison dripping fangs!"

Andi looked at Fluffy in the safety of the ship, wondering exactly why she'd never noticed the fangs. Probably because they weren't there.

"Then it's still here. Men, spread out. Find it. Kill it."

Fluffy whimpered and lay down on the floor. Andi gently patted her head. "Shush, it's okay. It was an accident. You didn't mean to scare them…"

"Sir, we couldn't find anything, sir."

The captain looked out, his gray eyes spanning all that was his domain. "Mass hysteria makes people hallucinate."

"I wasn't the only one who saw it," the woman argued, flailing her scrawny arms in frustration.

Andi set her eyes and dropped out through a human sized door in the side of the ship. "She's right. But it's a convert. And it's leaving the city. It's not safe here, what with trigger happy lunatics," she snapped. The soldier hiding the gun turned his eyes away.

The captain lowered his weapon. "I don't approve of those flying death machines in my hangar, converts or not."

"And I'm sure she doesn't appreciate you bags of protein screaming at her, either."

"You watch what you're saying, little woman."

"Try me. I'll sick my sentinel on you." It might have been Andi's imagination, but for a second she saw actual worry flicker on the captain's face before it was replaced by hard anger.

"You're lucky that I don't arrest you both."

"And I thank you for that," Andi replied, her voice as lifeless as her hair. With a turn on her heel, she returned to the inside of the ship.

Fluffy, pressed against a wall, peered up at Andi sadly. "Don't be upset. It'll all be okay once we get out of the city," she sighed, patting the machine on the head. "You didn't choose an easy life by joining us, you know. They hate you… and your own kind will too, soon."

Fluffy didn't seem to understand, and instead hummed a sad little machine song. Andi slid down on the floor beside the sentinel and righted her box of things, smashed underfoot by the ensuing panic. She began aimlessly chewing on a flat sandwich as the ship ascended into the air and out into the blackness of the real world.

Andi remained where she was even when Fluffy slipped from her side and hovered to the front to peer inquisitively out of the windshield. She was still sitting there when the red-haired Gabriel brought her a worn out knit blanket. "It gets cold on these trips. You might want this."

Jeff, a black-haired scrawny piece of a man, appeared framed by the light in the doorway. "Yo, girl, your sentinel is freaking out."

Andi stood up stiffly, her legs hurting. "Freaking out? How so?"

"It's hitting its head repeatedly on the sides of the ship… I think it's trying to get out."

Fluffy was indeed flying back and forth in the narrow hallway corridor, feverishly whining and bashing her head on things. Andi cautiously reached out. "Fluffy, what's…"

There was a loud crashing noise and the ship lurched violently. Andi screamed in surprise as she was thrown against Fluffy, who caught her and steadied the girl with her tentacles. "What was that?"

"Something hit us from below." the pilot shouted back. "I can't tell what it is because I can't read the signal!"

"Something is hitting us without a signal?" Andi asked as the ship lurched again, the sound of metal hitting metal coming from below. "What doesn't have a signal?"

"Something we haven't seen before," Gabriel answered. "Come on, Jeff, we have to figure out what we're dealing with!" the two vanished into the bowels of the ship, leaving Andi pressed up against the whimpering machine's side. 


	3. My Wings

Another loud thump came from beneath the ship. Gabriel cursed, so strained that the language sounded foreign as it echoed down the halls from her gun turret. "I can't turn enough to see it!"

"Don't look at me, I'm on top of the ship!" a scrawy-necked male shouted back. Meanwhile, in a state of panic, Andi had made her way up to the cockpit only with Fluffy pushing her along.

Before the shaking girl could say a word, a mass of twisted brown and black metal shot up in front of the windshield. Righting itself, the overtly lumpy machine stared into the cockpit. His dozen flaming red eyes looked down and came to rest on Andi for only a second before they looked over her and straight back, boring into Fluffy's eyes.

Fluffy whimpered and shrank down behind Andi. As quickly as it had come, however, the larger machine flicked his tentacles and vanished off with a forty-five degree dive into a side cavern, much too small for the ship to follow him had there been a desire to do so. The tiny Ishtar III continued on at a normal pace, but with hearts racing and guns readied.

A pilot, a blonde man with the darkest of green eyes, turned half is attention to the captain, sitting in the chair beside him. The captain was a nondescript brunet with similarly unnoticeable eyes, dressed in a ragged brown shirt that barely fit him. 

"What just happened?"

"It looked like a sentinel, but it sure as hell didn't read like one."

"Whatever it was," Gabriel radioed from her spot in the back of the ship. "It was smart. We couldn't have shot it with the way it snaked up the belly of the ship."

"And it was big," Andi threw in, her fear-induced silence finally broken. "Fluffy's only two-thirds that size, and her tentacles are thinner."

"What I want to know," the captain said as he looked out on blue-black crushed rocks highlighted with yellow head beams, "is why it ran away."

Fluffy, in the back, let out a single whimper of warning and promptly collapsed on her side, shaking the ship with the sheer force of something her size being forcibly dropped.

"Fluffy!" Andi screamed, running over to the whining machine's side and kneeling down. "What's wrong?" Fluffy struggled slightly to right herself. "What's wrong? Damn it, why didn't I bring that talking robot?"

To her great surprise, the captain turned to his copilot and said, "Punch it. We've got a sick machine in the back."

By the time they reached the tiny outpost's dock, Fluffy's condition had steadily worsened. Her high pitched cries were almost painful to listen to, coming out in punctured gasps. The metal covering over her exhaust vents on the sides her head was so hot that it couldn't be touched.

"Is there a mechanical lab here?" Andi asked, frantically jumping out of the ship door as it was trying to open. "Is there a repair shop? I've got a sick convert, I need to take her to a lab…"

"No, you don't," a male voice cut in as a rough hand grasped Andi's shoulder. A short man of roughly Andi's age and an apparently Asian heritage smiled at her through strangely white teeth. "I know what's wrong." He walked straight over the Fluffy and looked down at her. "Roll her onto her back and get her tentacles up in the air."

Two men went to oblige the stranger, leaving Andi to stand slack jawed. Roll her over onto her back and… "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Andi shrieked as the two workers struggled due to Fluffy's sheer size alone. "That's… perverted!"

"What are you talking about?" the stranger asked, looking at her like either he was confused, stupid, or she was crazy, or maybe a combination of those. "There's an intake grate at the base of her tentacles, and it sounds like her fans are overheating. You should have been able to put two and two together yourself," he said as the workers roughly seized hold of the pitiful machine and forced her to roll over.

Left speechless, Andi was still trying to draw up an appropriate reply from her stalled mind when the man turned around and held up a thick handful of oil and dirt. "You expect her to be able to breathe through this?" 

"She must have laid in something on the ship," Andi pouted. "She was washed before we left."

He snorted. "Lauren would never let a machine get like this, no matter what happened."

Fluffy, meanwhile, had gotten back on her 'feet' and was looking back and forth at the two like a spectator at a tennis match. "Lauren would have recognized the sound of a ventilation system in distress long before the poor thing collapsed."

"And what makes her such an expert on killer sentinels, pray tell?"

"Lauren's been fascinated with visions of the machines since… since before she was even freed! Lauren is the top mechanical analyst in the free human nation. Lauren practically did summersaults when she heard you were brining your live sentinel here. Lauren…"

"Does Lauren know she's the first word in all your sentences?"

Caught dumb, the male glared at Andi. She shrugged and studied the dock with cloudy eyes. Fluffy, meanwhile, was disorganizing the ship in an attempt to find her yellow rubber ball. "So, where's my cell?"

"We've got a very lovely nest set up for the sentinel…"

"I didn't ask about the sentinel's nest, I asked about a human cell. And her name isn't 'the sentinel.' Its Fluffy."

The young man looked rather disappointed. "I was hoping it wouldn't have a name yet. I was hoping we could call it Nell. You know, short for Sentinel? Laur- a friend and me thought it would be a really cute name."

"I didn't ask for a story, I asked for my cell."

Fluffy let out a loud whooshing noise of hydraulics, her mechanical sigh, then rolled onto her back and crossed her arms over her chest. "Sure, NOW you play dead!" Andi sighed in frustration, looking down at the prone machine.

As it turned out, Fluffy couldn't have disliked the nest they'd built for her any more. It was too stuffy, she thought, and too small. She didn't like having only one way of escaping from it if something should block her first exit. So instead of going into it, she sat on top of it and whined at the top of her air filters until it was finally agreed that she'd be allowed to build a nest more suitable to her needs for herself overlooking the dock. 

The young machine-knowing man, whose name turned out to be Chris, although he insisted it should be spelled with a one instead of an I, had only accepted Fluffy's rejection of his "perfect nest" with crushed resignation. Much to Andi's surprise, the hangar master had allowed Fluffy to build her crude nest on the vents overlooking the dock, on the condition that she respect the rules of the dock and his authority, and that she work as hard if not harder than any human for the good of the base. 

Fluffy spent the first days doing simple tasks, mostly carting heavy crates about. Andi wanted to give the machine a chance to get used to the outpost before attempting any real training. 

The biggest problem Andi initially encountered was Fluffy's lack of understanding of space, or the fact that by human standards she was gigantic. By the end of the week she'd either bumped into, stepped on, or accidentally smacked her tentacles into ever poor worker in the area.

"It probably has to do with that missing left eye. Lauren's examination will tell us, when she arrives back from the main city."

"When will Lauren arrive," Andi asked, irritated. She punched open a small energy storage canister and set it down in Fluffy's bowl. Fluffy stared at her bowl, looked up at Andi, and fussed.

"What's wrong with her?"

"She misses people energy. Geothermal power sources just don't please her. She was okay with the source when she still had human energy in her system, but now that it's all been used up…"

"I can imagine. If I went from steaks to ground beef I'd be peeved, too."

Andi patted Fluffy's head. "Come on, baby, eat!"

Fluffy looked from Andi to Chris, her red eyes almost pleading. "Don't look at me!" Chris cried, sliding backwards. "I'm no battery."

Grinning, Andi toyed with a fainted piece of a species that had evolved from lettuce. "To her, you're just a big, juicy, delicious, red chunk of flesh ready for the picking."

"Don't make her hungry. I already don't like the way she's looking at me."

"Drink your energy, you," Andi said, bopping Fluffy lightly right over her missing eye. The other people in the cafeteria were making a wide circle around the three of them, not only making Andi feel uncomfortable but trapped in with Chris. Frankly, Andi didn't wonder if it were him and not the spider-like machine they were avoiding.

A very young boy, perhaps around eight, approached them. His skin, probably cinnamon in the Matrix, was ashen in the real world. His large, hungry, reflective green eyes searched over Andi and Chris. He hadn't been out long enough to have any hair, and Andi could practically count his ribs through his shirt. "You're so young…" she whispered, even though she knew it was highly rude. It was true. The teens and early twenties were the ripe ages for awakening.

"I had dreams about them," he said, his starved eyes never leaving Fluffy. "Can it fly?"

"Of course. Would you like to see?"

The boy nodded eagerly. "Fluffy, can you show him how you fly?"

Fluffy looked about to see if she had take-off clearance then narrowed her red eyes in concentration, brilliant red coursing through her tentacles. Then, in the time it took an eyelash to fall to the cheek, she shot straight up into the air.

"I think she likes you," Andi smiled as the child watched Fluffy playfully wave her tentacles as she hung upside down from the lights, as if saying look mom, no hands. "She isn't usually so energetic."

The boy waited silently for Fluffy to come down, then ran forward and threw his arms around her. Confused, Fluffy reached out with her six smaller metal arms and wrapped them around his body, making baffled chirping noises. "Flying is freedom. When I go flying, I want you to be my wings." His voice sounded small and distant, like it was coming from another place, making Andi shiver. 

"Michallis? Michallis?" an aged blonde, her face made wise with wrinkles, called as she pushed through the crowd. "There you are. You know you're not supposed to be up yet- oh, its that machine."

Fluffy shrank back. Andi felt vague disappointment at Fluffy being written off as that machine. "Come with me, Michallis, you were ordered to be in bed."

"But I want to fly!" he protested as he was lead off by the woman's curled hands. As she disappeared down one corridor, the hangar master and a short man Andi had never seen before appeared out of another hall, heading straight in her direction. The shorter man's hands were clasped before his body. He looked worried and aged beyond how old he really must have been.

"We need to talk to you. The machine you reported attacking your ship when you arrived is back, and he's tearing up sugar cane plants all along the thermal vent. We were hoping we could use your machine to…"

"Fight fire with fire," the hangar master cut in. "That should drive away our annoying newcomer."

"Fluffy doesn't have any weapons… it was insisted upon by the council that we disarm all sentinels before even bringing them inside the gates, dead or alive."

"Can you put some back on?"

"I could, but they were already converted into other weapons and tools. If you had replacements…"

"Lauren's lab certainly would! I'm sure she wouldn't mind since it's for a good cause." Chris stood up, spilling soup across his shirt and seemingly not even noticing. "Let's go, I'll show you the way."

Fluffy trembled and hid her eyes behind Andi's curved back as they entered Lauren's lab area. Greasy blue walls were covered in twitching pieces of machines, alone with the corpses of odd monkey like creatures and the occasional spot of a mixture of blood and oil. "Chris, I don't think this is a good idea… imagine how you'd feel if the machines took you into a room full of twitching, dismembered human limbs."

Chris frowned like he didn't quite get it, then yanked two long, limp tentacle arms off the wall. One jerked when it lost contact with the power source. "We can take the cutting weapons off these."

"We'll need more than two if she's going to…"

"I'll get more!"

The operation was relatively simple. Fluffy shook her tentacles unhappily as she crawled across the floor, the feeling of the weight of the newly installed cutters irritating her. "Get her to come back over here, I have a plasma cutter for her."

Andi bit her lip to avoid laughing at Fluffy's misfortune. "I don't think she likes them."

"She'll adjust," Chris replied, setting down the cutter. "This thing is heavy! I can't believe they can still fly with it."

"Not to mention the amount of energy it must take to run…"

"The machines don't have to worry about energy conservation like we do," he replied, cutting a wire and reattaching it to the angry Fluffy. "Let's give this a test run." He held up a sheet of metal. "Cut this."

As Chris thrust his newly burned fingers under water, Andi didn't know if she should feel sorry for him or laugh. Being herself and him being himself, she decided laughter was more appropriate. "Come on, Chris, who really needs hair on their arms?"

Fluffy wagged her tentacles in either agreement or happiness.

Andi, walking beneath Fluffy as she used her tentacles to crawl along the ceiling, found it hard to contain her nervousness. Fluffy hadn't fought since the conversion. What if she couldn't do it right? What if the strange machine ripped her to pieces?

A small transport whisked them through the maze-like design of the small base, nestled away to hide from machine armies that were looking to wipe out the main city's food supply. "We'll exit 1 km from where its signal is being picked up, so it doesn't see how to get into the corridors," the short man explained. "We can watch her fight with feed from the other converts."

"Other converts? I didn't know any survived…"

"They avoid her. They act like she's a plague."

Andi looked down at her scuffed boots. Not even the other machines could forgive Fluffy for the sin of having been born a sentinel, it seemed. She couldn't imagine how painfully lonely that must be. If Fluffy were capable of understanding her isolation, that was. She knew the "wild" sentinels lived in large family packs, but Fluffy didn't seem to be suffering from a lack of pack…

A hole opened radially in the ceiling. With a pleasant chirp, Fluffy flew out and stretched her tentacles. Then, with a bone chilling war whoop, she took off in the direction she sensed the male's signal coming from.

"She's slow," Chris murmured, the uninvited but present guest. "I knew we should have straightened out that kinked tentacle…"

Andi punched Chris in the face, and it was good. 

Fluffy was enjoying the chance the flight gave her to sort her thoughts out without the clamoring noises of humans distracting her. She liked Andi and that funny looking child machine, the one that had held her. She was disgusted with the humans around them. She could see the fear in their eyes, taste their hatred so poisonous that it choked within her. She only let them continue living because Master Andi would want her to do so, and she's sworn her life to follow the family headed by Master Andi.

Still, she snuck in her revenge when she could. After all, it only took a little "accidental" bump from her to push their weak, top-heavy protein bodies over. And it was funny, too, to see them flail their ineffective limps as they toppled.

She spotted the other male hovering over the sugar, as she'd been told she would. Her eyes narrowed as she held her ground. Her voice booming, she communicated a code message to him. You have entered territory of my family. Leave now, or I will destroy you.

I don't see your name in it, the large stranger snapped back, his voice smug.

Her tentacles snapped forward into attack position, as did his. Something about him disturbed Fluffy. He looked like one of her kind superficially, but there was something wrong in his head. He was too big, his tentacles too thick. His body seemed patched with brown fields from repaired bullet scars. His mind was difficult for her to read the waves coming off of, like the programming was incompatible with hers on some minor level.

Why were you on human ship? he snarled as he lunged forward. Fluffy dodged as he took out a large rock formation. Answer me!

Not a human ship! Master Andi's ship, and master Andi is machine!

He whipped around, eyes glowing. Is that why you attack me? Because family head told you to? That's stupid reason. Why doesn't family head fight me herself?

Fluffy raised her tentacles higher and rattled t6hem in anger. How dare he question her family head. Peacekeeper keeps the peace of the people. You destroy the peace. And… and… Michallis needs sugar for pancakes!

Surprise fell over the male's mind signals and she took the opportunity to lunge. The male tried to twist away, but she managed to get her claws around her and throw them both into a pile of rocks. Dust flew everywhere, causing the male to cough as he recoiled from the blow. She'd risk her life to bring another machine… no, that name was a human name, a human… a piece of sugar? Either she was stupid, or…

Fluffy tried to take a leap forward and found herself faltering. Her engine misfired. Alarms screamed in her head. Her vision blurred as she fell forward, tentacles flowing limply behind her.

"Fluffy!" Andi screamed, the hangar master barely able to restrain her. "Why is she fainting? She wasn't hit that hard. She-" Andi's mind flashed back to a vision of Fluffy's bowl, her unconsumed lunch. She hated the taste of the energy Andi gave her… how long had it been since she'd eaten?

The male machine loomed over Fluffy, his body only a blur in her failing vision. Why, why had she ignored the low fuel warning bells in her head because of taste alone? She whined and tried to drag herself forward, but her tentacles refused to obey her. The male watched her struggle, knowing she must feel the coldness of impending death. Yet she didn't seem afraid… she was ready to struggle until her last breath was spent.

He sighed and raised his claws high above her head. It was time to end this silliness. 


	4. Feet are for walking, noses are for smel...

He swung his tentacles forward, grasping her head between his claws, trying to force her to look upward. She was heavy, and cumbersome in his arms. He pulled her body up closer to his, grasping her just between the forward-facing row of small pincers along her underbelly. Then, with a sleek wire snaking out of his body, he connected into her.

A bluish-white spark passed between them, shaking both machines violently. Take it, damn you! the spotted male hissed as he forced his energy wire further into her download slot. Another spark passed between them, sending a jolt through Fluffy that started her eye-cams up again. Seeing the male she started to whirl and thrash her tentacles, but didn't have enough strength yet to fully pull them forward. He pushed down on her back, keeping her shoved into the jagged edges of the rock, marring dents into her carapace. 

The energy bar in her vision began to rise. When the male had given up half the energy he was carrying he released her and floated backwards. The sudden release of pressure sent her rolling down the hill, her tentacles flailing behind her. With a burst and a kick she managed to get airborne relatively untangled.

Don't do that, he sternly advised her. Or I have to treat you like child again.

After a hostile, long stare she took off, without a word. He watched her go, and suddenly became conscious of the fact that he was entirely alone as she vanished into the distance.

Andi wrung out her fingers and paced back and forth. Her eyes were flat, like light could no longer reflect off them. Michallis, sitting on the hot water pipe, studied her silently and played with the torn hem of his shirt.

"She's been hiding in her little nest since she returned. She won't come out, and she snaps at anyone who tries to get near her."

"She's upset because she lost?" Michallis suggested.

"You saw those blue sparks on the video, right, Michallis? He DID something to her, and I'm worried about what it was. I want to think it was only a jump-start, but…" 

"You're afraid because you don't know what they say when they talk to one another." Andi looked over her shoulder at the boy. He was far smarter and more observant than many of the adults, and on some level that disturbed Andi.

"I think she's crying. I found coolant stains on the concrete… I can't think of any other explanation. I wish I knew what would do for her…"

Michallis, bored with Andi's indecision, climbed up the ladder to the machine's nest. He laid out of a piece of bread cautiously. "Thank you for… trying. For me."

Fluffy whined, rolling her massive body slightly. Michallis got back on the ladder. "They tell me you can't feel anything, but… I want you to feel better." 

Far outside the base, in the cold of the upper world, rain beating down on his back, the spotted male shivered beneath the wreckage of a ship. The thermal vent he was lying on did nothing to cut through the chill of the eternal night his kind had been born into. If you weren't so stupid, his internal processor whirred, you could be warm inside the base. You could be with _her._

I have no time to deal with foolish females. Risking her life for sugar… She'd be better off if the humans had wiped her mind, rather than leave her an idiot.

That's not it and you know it. She did it for her family- and because she has a family, she doesn't have to sleep in the rain like you, cowering every time a patrol passes by, fearing this might be the day they realize you for the traitor to the robot race you are. This might be the day they'll drag you in and rip you apart piece by piece while your sensors record every last feeling…

The male rolled onto his side. His family unit, all but him, had been slaughtered… and not by the humans, either. By other machines. He'd been knocked out during the struggle, and had awakened only when a two-legged machine had taken pity upon him and corrected his damaged wires. When he'd gone to look for his family, all he'd ever found were scattered pieces of them.

He remembered the attackers calling his family unit "shitty death machines," and the more common but hurtful name "the unclean ones." He remembered the elder siblings circling around the newly programmed infants as the other machines bashed their eyes in. One of them had cried out to another passing group of his kind, but they were newer models, and saw the beating of the older models as simply evolution.

She needs me, the spotted male thought. She's too innocent to possibly survive as one of our kind. Even the least innocent can't survive alone, anymore. She really needs me…

Fluffy sipped boredly at the pre-packaged energy. "At least she's eating," Andi sighed. "That's an improvement." Andi looked up to find Chris standing on the landing above her, staring down at her. I hope he doesn't drool in my eye, she thought. "I want to run a simulation with her. I think I can help her work out of this… if I could only communicate with her."

"I'll go with you."

"Must you?"

"Yes," he said shortly. He hadn't really forgiven her for the punch, and she was glad. "I bet you don't even know how to program a simulation personality, especially one that will be compatible with something like her."

"I… yeah. So what?"

Later… 

Andi slugged Chris in the back of the head. "You take those down at least three cups or I'll turn your eye sockets more pretty colors!"

"Spoil sport," Chris muttered, rubbing the back of his injured head. "What if she WANTS to look like that, huh?" The image of the girl on the screen had pale, delicate looking skin crossed lightly with blue veins under the eyes. Tangles of black tentacle-like, thick dreadlocks dangled down her back, highlighted by circular scarlet ribbons. Her eyes were a pale, rusty brown that was almost red, and a halo of different red circles ran in a piece of what was supposed to look like jewelry across her forehead. She was dressed in a black bodysuit… Chris's design… circled with red and decorated in circular crimson shapes. Long gloves and boots helped cover all of her body that wasn't above her chin.

Her nose, chest, and waist were tiny and sharp, more angular than perhaps was realistic, but it was okay for the purpose of a simulation. They'd wanted her to look as much like a human version of a sentinel as they could, for the purpose of easing her into the simulation.

"Like that's not going to attract attention to her."

"I'll have you know, Fluffy helped design this herself!" He pointed to Fluffy, doodling stick figures on the wall with a piece of charcoal. Andi gripped Chris' shoulder.

"Chris… she's making art. She doesn't have a program for making art."

"She probably picked it up from some local kids with her learning and adaptation program."

Andi frowned and bit her lip. "Or we've severely underestimated the abilities of the sentinel. Come on, let's just get into the simulation before I blow my head with thinking."

Chris looked essentially the same inside the simulation as he did in the real world, only without the pudgy chin and bad haircut. He'd emphasized the slants in the corners of his eyes. He was wearing a hip-length brown fur trimmed jacket that contrasted ghastly with the brown tones in his skin.

For herself, Andi chose the outfit she'd worn before when entering the Matrix on the very few occasions she'd done it. She had a white cotton duster to match her hair, which went from her real world blonde to simply white in the simulation. Her eyes were still blue, her chin still sharp, but her back a bit more curved to fit with the male feminine ideal.

"Where are all the people?" Andi asked, looking through the empty streets of the simulation.

"All the ready programmed people would be attacking us right now. Our system isn't strong enough to support agent trainers AND bystanders."

"Oh. You know, I haven't really… been in a simulation since I was freed. I went into the Matrix once, and then again, but never… never when we were in any real danger. I was just a look-out. I… I got scared the second time, and I froze up. After that, they said I wasn't any use to them. So I became a mechanic. It… it still hurts sometimes, and… why am I telling you this?!"

Fluffy, meanwhile, fell over with a flopping noise. "Are you okay" Andi asked.

"Tentacle gone?" Fluffy asked, confused.

Chris and Andi both grinned widely, their teeth almost reflecting the sun. "She can talk!" they cried. Andi helped Fluffy to her feet. "Yes, tentacle gone. People walk on their feet."

"Feeeeeet?"

"These are feet," Chris said, waving a foot at her. Fluffy tried to emulate him and nearly fell over again from lack of balance.

"Feeeeet?" she asked again.

"Right. Here, like this," Chris replied, eagerly walking back and forth in front of her.

It took a few false starts, but eventually Fluffy got the hang of walking without falling on her rear. "Feet for walking!" she said proudly. Then, she paused and poked herself in the nose. "This more feet?"

"That's your nose, it's for smelling," Andi answered.

She grabbed her ear and tugged on it. "This feet or nose?"

"That's your ear, it's for hearing!"

"What this?" Fluffy asked, patting her hips. 

"Those are your hips. They bend so you can sit down."

"Oh," Fluffy said, biting a finger in concentration. It was a personality quirk they'd programmed into her character. "What this?" she asked, reaching up and grabbing each of her breasts in one hand.

Andi blanched. "Don't grab them! Those are your breasts. They're used for… they're… decorative."

Fluffy pointed at Chris. "No breasts. Not pretty?"

"Mean don't have breasts. Men like to look at them…" Andi said, uncertainly playing with her hair.

"Fluffy understand now! Feet for walking, nose for smelling, breasts for men!" she cried, leaping forward and shoving Chris' face straight into her boobs. "Andi got bigger decorations than Fluffy."

"Fluffy!" Andi cried.

"I really don't mind…" Chris replied, his voice muffled.

"Fluffy, shoving men into your boobs is a no-no! Let him go!"

Fluffy did as told, and Chris hit the pavement with a floomph noise. "I think we've got a lot to teach…"

It was evening when training was done and Fluffy seemed to have forgotten about earlier, enthusiastically bouncing up and down on her tentacles, shaking the entire room with her happiness. Andi had tried playing fetch with Fluffy, but all that had come of that was Fluffy fetching a very unhappy mechanic and then sitting on him. Andi hoped his ribs were only bruised…

"Lauren should be arriving soon," Chris informed Andi as the two watched Michallis have a bit more success throwing the ball so Fluffy could fetch it… without sitting on anyone in the process. "She's really excited. She wants to do a full-body examination. Imagine, a live, tame machine."

"My mentor had tamed machines. Didn't she care about them?"

"Well, they were nothing like a sentinel…"

"And why not?" Andi asked. Then she looked away. "It won't hurt Fluffy, will it?"

"I can't imagine it would… and once we know she's working, maybe we can train her into the real Matrix."

Andi wanted to question the nature of we, but left it for the time being. "Chris… and Michallis… speaking of my mentor, there was… there was once a question he and I didn't really see equally on, so I'll ask what you think." Andi resisted adding and for you, I use the word loosely.

"Shoot," Chris replied.

"Do you think the machines… really ARE endowed with the spirit of man?"

"What do you mean?" 

"We know they raise offspring, form unions, and that some of them fear death from the Zion archives. "But do they love their offspring; do they love their mates? Do they have a religion that tells them how to behave if they wish to live beyond physical death?"

"You're asking if the machines have religion," Chris questioned, looking confused.

"I'm asking if they believe they have an immortal soul. I'm asking if we should believe they do. I mean, some people believed that even humans aren't born with a soul… that they earn it through suffering and prayer. Some believe that you get a soul from being loved."

Chris thought for a moment. "I believe you can say they have a… a universal soul, if you will. What people in the old days would have merely called a network, but it's far to advanced to be just that now, wouldn't you say?"

Andi curled up. "Yeah. I guess. But… when we sent Fluffy out and she lost, do you think she feared death? Do you think she was upset because she was humiliated?"

"Machines don't have emotions like we do. So no, I don't think that. But whether they have emotions is a different question than if they have a soul."

"What's so unique about souls, emotion, love… that limit them to human beings, to creatures with flesh?"

"The fact that humans always want to believe they're better than everything else. Us versus them," Michallis answered, looking straight at Andi. Fluffy hovered beside him, silent. She'd heard what they'd said, but she had no way of speaking, no way of communicating to them what she thought on the matter.

That's why humans didn't think machines had souls, Fluffy thought to herself. Because they can't express their feelings the same way humans do. Because we don't speak. But Fluff had never been one for philosophy, so she let the question drop and returned to chasing the ball. Sentinels… or as they called themselves, Peace Keepers, were muscles, not brains, in robot society.

To be Continued…


End file.
